STATE HOUSE ROUNDUP -- The lost week on Beacon Hill

By Matt Murphy STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Monday

Jul 9, 2018 at 9:30 AM

A recap and analysis of the week in state government.

Massachusetts prides itself on being first.

The first public school. The first state to legalize gay marriage. The state with the "best" benefits for veterans. So it must've been jarring last week for policy makers to acclimate themselves to the quandry they put themselves in.

With the stroke of South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster's pen July 5, Massachusetts became the last state in the country without a permanent spending plan in place for fiscal 2019, which in 46 states, including this one, started July 1.

Some might shrug it off as a technicality. After all, the Legislature and governor did work together to put in place temporary funding to keep government fully operational while negotiations continue.

But of the 10 budgets House Speaker Robert DeLeo has overseen in the big chair, this one will be the latest. And don't think he's not aware.

"Like everything, of course we would've wanted it done, but we're working hard and trying to get through it and we're here today," House Ways and Means Chairman Jeffrey Sanchez said July 5, emerging from the speaker's office to otherwise sleepy hallways on the day after the Fourth of July.

The midweek holiday essentially smothered productivity on Beacon Hill, where the branches dropped any guise that agreement might be reached on the budget, or other bills, and met only briefly and informally.

With idle time on their hands and the weight of a missed deadline on their shoulders, tension between the branches spilled out into the public, as it sometimes does this time of year. One House source accused the Senate of being unfocused and riled by "internal politics," while a senior Senate Democrat laid any blame that there is for the late budget on the doorstep of Sanchez, whose inexperience, they said, has led to a bottleneck of legislation in his committee.

The sniping between the branches over the budget deserves attention not just because it is holding up a single deal, but has the potential to fester during the closing weeks of the session when many more compromises will need to be made.

In addition to the budget, legislation proposing to regulate short-term rentals, protect consumers from data breaches, enhancing civics education and overhauling health care laws are all in conference committees.

Then there are economic development, opioid abuse prevention and clean energy bills (just to name a few) that haven't even gotten that far yet. And the two-year session ends July 31.

"As time goes by, obviously one of the things I do worry about is the opportunity cost on all the other stuff that's currently pending that needs to get worked on and done by the end of the session," Gov. Charlie Baker said last week.

Details about the budget sticking points are hard to come by, but it's not much of a stretch to think that immigration has to be one of the hurdles. The Senate passed an amendment to restrict local police cooperation with federal immigration agents, but House leadership has been reluctant to take that issue on this session.

Baker has also threatened to veto any "sanctuary state" provisions in the budget, which might have been what he had in mind when he suggested the House and Senate just strip the budget of all the policy riders and send him a clean budget focused purely on dollars and cents.

Speaking of dollars and cents, Baker administration budget officials signaled to fiscal 2019 budget negotiators that if they're arguing over nickels and dimes, they can stop.

With a projected $1.2 billion in excess tax revenue now expected to find its way onto the ledger for fiscal 2018, the governor's budget office teased July 6 that legislators would not be out of line if they assumed an extra $100 million to $200 million for fiscal 2019.

The new federal tax law and general economic strength has been a windfall for Massachusetts, even though business confidence took a dive following passage of a state law that would pile added expenses on employers in the form of a higher minimum wage and paid family leave.

The administration also said that after making legally mandated deposits into the state's "rainy day" fund of about $500 million and paying about $300 million in accrued bills, the state may have up to $200 million in free cash.

It wasn't all about fireworks, in the sky or otherwise, last week.

Overturning a Superior Court judge's ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court found that the state's 20-day pre-election voter registration deadline did not unconstitutionally restrict someone's right to vote. The decision was a win for Secretary of State William Galvin, who had appealed to the state's highest court, but it may not look that way to everyone.

Galvin's primary opponent Josh Zakim has criticized Galvin for appealing when it appeared the courts had struck down the impediment to last-minute voter registration, and voting rights groups decried the decision.

For his part, Galvin tried to spin it both ways. He said the ruling "will be of assistance in my fight to pass legislation that would change the laws in Massachusetts to allow same-day registration."

The Cannabis Control Commission also handed out its first recreational retail marijuana license to a shop in Leicester, and Baker put his signature on the "red flag" gun access law, to the excitement of gun control advocates and the disgust of the National Rifle Association.